Recently, the woman and I hit St. Lucia for a long weekend. It was my first time there and I loved it. Mountains, rain forest, beaches, great food and Steel Pulse in concert!

On-Site St. Lucia: Start the Day Right in Anse La Raye | Uncommon Caribbean.

I should remember to keep traveling.

Today, I’m happy to announce the launch of a new site geared towards highlighting the often overlooked charms of the Caribbean. The Antilles are so much more than just beaches. The local people, food, drinks, music, natural wonders like volcanoes, hot springs, and more all add up to a unique experience that is best enjoyed by directly immersing yourself in the culture. Something you won’t find on any massive cruise ship.

So, for those looking for a deeper look into what the beautiful islands and people of the Caribbean have to offer, head over to the brand new Uncommon Caribbean site, become a fan of the UC Facebook page, look out for our latest videos on YouTube, or follow UncommonCarib on Twitter.

I need to remember to get down to the islands, explore new places and take as many photos as possible!

A few months ago, I wrote about tracking down stolen images with TinEye. That tip generated a lot of conversation about  the ownership of original photography with level headed rebuttals from folks who understand that copyright protection begins the moment a work is set and that “copyright over a work immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work.” Read more about that here.

Yes, that’s an oversimplification and the law isn’t quite so cut and dry unless the work is registered with the government (still not 100%), but that would have been all the information needed to cover the uses outlined in that post.

When I wrote that first post, there were plenty of funny examples of my works finding their way into company’s and people’s commercial uses. I wasn’t trying to be mean spirited about the whole thing, it was more of a humorous take on unauthorized appropriation for small commercial endeavors… but what happens when it’s not a small or humorous commercial endeavor?

That was just the case when I woke up this past Sunday morning and during my normal morning routine, watched a heart wrenching video about Tainted Meat on the New York Times website. At the very beginning of the piece was this photo:

I immediately recognized it. I’d taken that photo of a garden gnome in an old lady’s front yard while in California last year… but I honestly couldn’t believe that the Times could have overlooked getting authorization of this photo I’d made available for personal use on mybestdesktops.com.

I so couldn’t believe it, that I didn’t even double-check the photo until the following day when I overlaid the Times crop over my original.

There was no question. That was my photograph in a New York Times video piece! I immediately, checked with my photographer, photo editor, illustrator friends and a copyright lawyer on the best course of action. Some were more official or threatening than others… but I thought the best thing would be to call the producer of the piece… this must have been an unfortunate oversight.

To make a long story short, dealing with the folks at the Times was a pleasure and action was taken swiftly to correct the problem. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the work they do and can completely understand how this sort of error could occur.

In the end, I got credited just below Pulitzer prize winning photographer Damon Winter… and the story has really gotten a big response that could turn into positive change in the meat industry.

I should remember to keep shooting… this could be going somewhere.

Muddy with some nice new dings

Grabbed some pants from Patagonia yesterday, hopped on the motorcycle and rode up a bit past Bear Mountain to Mount Beacon Park. After a roughly 10 mile hike and some gorgeous views, the verdict was that the boots and socks worked great. (Only 1 small blister.) The synthetic shirt dried quickly after getting completely drenched in a downpour and the pack kept mostly dry. Only loser was the new pants that stayed wet for the remainder of the hike. Still, nice to be completely alone up here:

Mount Beacon Top

Oh well… I should remember to get out again today…

I’ve never camped before in my life. I’ve slept under the stars before, sure, but that usually had nothing to do with an interest in getting away from it all. So, here I find myself one week away from a 22 day, demanding trek across the Atlas Mountains in Morocco with not a clue as to what I’ve gotten myself into… or what I need to make it through.

My biggest fear (today anyway) is that I’ll be ill-equipped for the trek and get something painfully gross like black toe where I start bleeding out of my feet and losing toe nails… or something worse. With that in the back of my mind, I began the process of researching gear and equipping myself as quickly as possible in order to have time to test everything out before I find myself cold and broken in some desolate landscape with Arabs speaking French.

The first thing I noticed when I began to outfit myself is that there’s no getting around looking like a stereotypical hiker. It was hard to do, but after enough looks from store employees after I asked for an item that “looked cooler” or had “less straps”, I resigned myself to the idea of function over form.

Anyway, here are the spoils of an afternoon spent visiting Patagonia, EMS, and Paragon:

Round 1 Trek Equipment

1. SCARPA Men’s SL M3 Backpacking Boots: I am not messing around with my feet. These seem to be top of the line.
2. Marmot Precip Jacket: I don’t expect much rain next to the Sahara, so I didn’t go wild on a hardshell waterproof layer.
3. Marmot PreCip Pant: I really hope it doesn’t rain…
4. Marmot Afterburner Jacket: Yes, this is my first fleece article of clothing ever, BUT it’s name is “Afterburner”, so that makes it automatically cool.
5. Pearl Izumi Grip-Lite Glove: I’m a little worried these won’t be warm enough when we start getting to altitude…
6. Patagonia Men’s Active Brief: If I have to walk 8 hours a day wearing the same underwear over and over, these things better be made with magic and rainbows.
7. Eagle Creek Undercover Leg Stash: How cool is this thing? Top secret document storage. (I wanted it in black, but oh well…)
8. NALGENE 32-Oz. Wide Mouth Tritan Bottle: Yeah… I needed a water bottle… I still need another one, but “testing” out the Nalgene first.
9. SMARTWOOL PhD Outdoor Light Crew Socks: They were out of medium thickness, so I’m testing out light. Still need to buy 3 or 4 more pairs if they work out.
10. NIKWAX Footwear Conditioner: To help break in the boots with the added benefit of waterproofing.
11. Casio Men’s Solar Atomic Pathfinder Multi-Band Watch: I can’t go to the wilderness without a cool gadget or two. This thing does temperature, barometer, altitude, digital compass and more.
12. CAMELBAK Omega 70 Reservoir: A bit of an impulse purchase based on a recommendation from the guy helping me at EMS. The idea of riding a camel with a Camelback does appeal to me, though…
13. OSPREY Talon 33 Pack: This was one of the most difficult purchases and the one where I truly resigned myself to function over form. It does have a pretty evil looking, skeleton bird logo, so that’s cool.
14. OUTDOOR RESEARCH Helios Sun Hat: “SolarShield™ fabric provides UPF 50+ sun protection”… so I assume that’s good.
15. Adventure Medical Trail Easy Care Kit: Only rated 1-3 days… no problem!
16. Black Diamond Contour Elliptic Shock Trekking Pole: I always thought walking sticks were for old people, but everyone I talked to assured me I would be happy I had these.
17. Men’s Merino 1 Crew: This thing is amazing. Super thin wool feels soft and delicious on your skin. Plus the cut is actually slim instead of boxy. Very nice.
18. Men’s Capilene® 2 T-Shirt: Yes, the wool Merino is nice, but its price is very high, so I thought I would test out the synthetic alternative and see if I could make do.
19. Men’s Capilene® 2 Bottoms: I hope this stuff works…
20. Eagle Creek Travel Towel X-Large: “Extra large size allows for full body coverage.” That’s what I’m talking about… but seriously, this thing better dry in a hurry.

Notice there are no pants on this list. Every pair I saw looked horrible and I just couldn’t bring myself to purchase a pair, but after doing a little more research, it would appear that I have no choice but to look like a dork if I want to be comfortable.

Oh well… once I get the pants, I need to remember to put all this stuff to the test and quickly finish gearing up.

I produce a lot of content online. Most of it in the form of images. Whether they’re desktop wallpapers at MyBestDesktops.com or photos I post to my Flickr and JPG accounts, I like to think that the copyright information that accompanies them would deter folks from ripping them off to use for their own financial gains. Of course, that’s super naive of me, and TinEye.com reverse visual search is here to help track down the offenders.

Basically, what TinEye does is take any image you submit to it and try to find wherever it’s being used online. The easiest way to use the service is by installing the Firefox extension.

So, with that out of the way, let’s check out some of the thieves using my imagery without permission:

MintProperty.com used my Empire State Building desktop for a party flyer:

Before

After

My Dark Sky desktop wallpaper is getting used quite a lot. Here are a couple examples:

Before

After

After...

After Again!

My High Voltage desktop from Hong Kong used for the Zap Stick 800,000 Volts Pink Stun Gun:

Before

After

And my Manhattan Bridge desktop used also for a party flyer (extra funny because I’m in the lower left of the image):

Before

After

These are just a few of the ways unscrupulous folks online have been ripping off some of my images. Not a ton that can be done about it, but at least with TinEye.com, I can stay up to date with some of the offenders.

I should remember to visit that site often…

I’ve been looking for a new lamp for my work office for some time. Being the designy guy I am, I thought I’d stop by Design Within Reach and pick me up something fancy. The only problem, is that the place sucks. The people who work there suck. The rate at which they bring in new merchandise sucks. Basically, the whole shopping experience is terrible.

It starts when you walk in (my DWR is at the corner of 20th and Broadway) and no one working there can be bothered to even acknowledge your existence. This continues as you walk around. All the employees simply sit in front of their computers doing what appears to be completely nothing. Being that I was the only person in the store walking from lamp to lamp, you would have thought they might have given a shit, but nope. Lucky for me, there are only a couple of lamps stocked at DWR, so even though I was interested in the Tolomeo Mini Lamp, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt the employees and their effort to avoid politely selling me a lamp.

Of course, this wasn’t my first time in this outpost of snobbery, so I was amazed that after a couple years, all the products carried hadn’t changed almost at all… and of course, neither had the sucky attitude.

I walked out…

…Down the street to A.I. Feedman and purchased the same damn lamp from a nice guy who chatted about motorcycles with me to help me understand why a chrome base costs so much.

I should remember to never bother with DWR.

So, we hit this bar in Shibuya called X+Y based on a tip in the Wallpaper guide to Tokyo (which, by the way, must be written for people who make a lot more money than me). Anyway, this place was super cool in an amazingly cheesy fashion. The best way to describe it to a New Yorker would be it’s the bastard child of Milk & Honey plus the old party Vampyros Lesbos, but seen through a demented Japanese kaleidoscope.

Everything has a 70′s (or even 60′s) kind of feel, but then there’s this big-ol’ disco ball in the middle of the room and a shiny white grand piano against one of the walls. Next to the grand piano is a tiny stage on which was a white acoustic guitar in a stand and a white chair (both of which went unused while we were there).

Then, of course, there’s the side room who’s walls are all painted blank and upon which hang old-school looking nudes of Japanese women. Fantastic!

Not to be outdone, are the bathrooms. Their walls are also painted black, but so glossy that you can use them as ghostly mirrors while you use the facilities. Additionally, I hear the women’s room was outfitted with a bunch of buttons that controlled everything from the toilet seat going up and down, to the lights, to the flushing mechanism. Additionally, whenever you leave the facilities, either the beautiful hostess or sharply dressed manager are waiting just outside with towels to clean your hands!

I must remember to throw a party here or something if I ever move to Japan.

I have to recommend The Park Hotel to anyone visiting Tokyo for any reasons with one very important suggestion: request a room facing the Tokyo Tower. The view is fantastic.

The rooms were nice enough. The was no wireless, but they did provide an ethernet port and free relatively high-speed internet. The bed was firm but comfy. And the toilet was one of those futuristic johns that warm up when you sit on them and have a built in bidet.

The lobby was also nice, however I wouldn’t recommend the restaurants or the breakfasts.
I should also remember how fantastically central the Shiodome area was. Withiin walking distance was the Tokyo Fish Market, Hama Rikyu Gardens, the Tokyo Tower, and even (if you’ve got some energy) the Tokyo Imperial Palace.

I absolutely have to remember to book a room here next time I visit Tokyo.

This guy had the brilliant idea to tweak his photo’s color settings using Photoshop CS and above’s Match Color tool. Fantastic!

I gotta remember to use this sometime.